"The Cult of the Clitoris." That was the headline on a 1918 piece in the Vigilante, a political journal published by Noel Pemberton Billing, the rabid right-wing British member of Parliament, accusing the San Francisco-bred exotic dancer Maud Allan of being a lesbian, a sadist and a German sympathizer. To prove his point, Billing - who'd riled wartime England with his outrageous claim that the Germans were blackmailing "47,000 highly placed British perverts" - trumpeted the fact that Allan, who'd made her name in Europe in the early 1900s performing her version of Salome's "Dance of the Seven Veils," was appearing in private performances of Oscar Wilde's infamous play "Salomé," which the British government had banned from public performance.

Allan sued Billing for libel. The sensational trial that followed - a front-page diversion from the horrific slaughter taking place in the fields and trenches of World War I France and Belgium - inspired "Salomania," a new play by the noted Bay Area writer-director Mark Jacksonthat premieres at Aurora Theatre on next Friday night, June 15.

"Billing's contention was that only doctors or perverts would know what a clitoris was," says Jackson, who became fascinated by the trial, whose transcripts he acquired from a London antiquarian bookstore, while researching the "Salomé" he directed at Aurora in 2006. "The lack of male understanding of the female anatomy provides a great deal of humor for the play," whose themes of media sensationalism, gay bashing and wartime hysteria are "entirely about our present moment."

Jackson's play juxtaposes the war and life on the home front (six actors double as soldiers and civilian characters), exploring the surreal world in which a British officer breakfasts in the deadly trenches and lunches hours later in his tony London club.

Allan, who lost the libel suit and her career - 20 years earlier, she'd changed her name from Durrant after her brother, Theodore, was convicted of murdering two Mission District girls and hanged at San Quentin - "was both a potential hero and a potential threat to society," Jackson says. "She was intentionally pushing boundaries."

Sosin, who has played the San Francisco festival for the past six years, will improvise on themes he composed to Von Sternberg's noirish 1928 classic, "The Docks of New York," Herbert Brenon's 1923 "Spanish Dancer" - he describes the music as a mix of Spanish Renaissance and Gypsy music - Chinese director Sun Yu's "Little Toys" (the music will include the synthesized sounds of Chinese instruments) and Felix the Cat cartoons.

"I grew up watching those cartoons in the later TV versions," says Sosin, 61, on the horn from his Connecticut home. He swings them with the sound of 1920s jazz, "ragtime, stride and endless Mickey Mousing of crashes and sound effects." He plans to improvise the music with Stockholm drummer Mattias Olsson, who plays with the Swedish Matti Bye Ensemble, which will accompany Swedish director Mauritz Stiller's 1920 film "Erotikon."

"Mattias and I had great fun last year playing on Disney cartoons," says Sosin, who will join Toychestra, the inventive all-female Oakland ensemble that plays toy instruments, for the Felix finale.

Commissions and classics

The Berkeley Symphony, flying high under the leadership of Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro, has commissioned four new works for its 2012-2013 season, which opens Oct. 4 at Zellerbach Hall with a new work by San Francisco composer Paul Dresherthat uses two of his original instruments: the Quadrachord, a guitar-like instrument that can be plucked or bowed, and the Hurdy Grande, a big brother to the traditional crank-turned hurdy gurdy. It shares the opening-night bill with Ives' "The Unanswered Question" and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.

The symphony, which has extended Carneiro's contract through 2017, will also premiere pieces commissioned from Steven Stucky, Andreia Pinto-Correia and 21-year Berkeley native Dylan Mattingly, a John Adamsprotege whom Adams called "a hugely talented young composer who writes music of wild imagination and vigorous energy." The symphony will also bring forth Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances," Ligeti's Piano Concerto played by Shai Wosner, and Lynn Harrellperforming Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto.

Goings & comings

Marin Theater Company's Producing Director Ryan Rilettehas been hired away by the Round House Theatrein Bethesda, Md., where he'll be producing artistic director. It's a step up for the 39-year-old Rilette, who worked closely with MTC Artistic Director JassonMinadakis, directed the company's current show, "God of Carnage," and put together the landmark three-theater collaboration that brought Tarrell McCraney's Brother/Sister Plays trilogy to the Bay Area in 2010, with MTC, ACT and the Magic each doing one of the plays. In addition to its main-stage theater, the Round House has a second, smaller venue for developing new plays.

"It was too good of an opportunity to pass up," Rilette says. MTC has hired Sandra Weingart, a former managing director at Aurora Theatre who's been serving in various capacities with MTC, as interim managing director while searching for Rilette's replacement. He's the third local theater artist cherry-picked for a bigger job recently. Berkeley Rep Associate Artistic Director Les Watershas taken over as artistic director at Actors Theatre of Louisville; Meredith McDonoughis leaving her gig as TheatreWorks' director of new works to become Waters' associate artistic director in Louisville.

Also changing jobs but not cities: Teddy Witherington, executive director of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus since 1998, and onetime ringmaster of San Francisco Pride Parade, will step down from the chorus job next month to become director of events for Out and Equal Workplace Advocates in San Francisco. The chorus will conduct a search for his replacement.

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